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29 January 2010

I am keenly aware that the words “beer” and “alarm” should never be put together in a sentence. So with that in mind, I had quite a conundrum on my hands when I heard last night that Chip the Beer Guy would be making a 7:15AM appearance on Rock 107. At the mybeerbuzz shack in sunny Siberia, the FM reception is not only sketchy, but limited to my alarm clock and an old transistor radio whose antenna fell off during the Nixon administration. I begged John last night to crank up all the transmitter-hamsters at Rock 107 and I even offered up the flux capacitor in my 1972 Delorean in an attempt to boost their transmission enough to reach Siberia. In the end it worked, and I was able to catch the 7:15 and 8:15 shows…and what funny shows they were!

For the two or three people in North America that don’t read mybeerbuzz.com or listen to Rock 107, I’ll recap. During last weeks show John mentioned Blind Robins, a salt-cured pickled herring snack that used to be sold in corner bars. Now don’t get me wrong; in Siberia we are well aware of the virtues of odiferous salted fish snacks and how they marry well to beer, especially in ice fishing shacks and on long horse-drawn sleigh rides, but as I was chasing down a clever Blind Robins picture for last week’s post, Chip was chasing down ACTUAL blind robins.

So at 7:15AM the guys (and NOT Ruthie) set off to taste the fish. Right out of the gate Jay refused and Ruthie threatened that there would be vomit if she ate one, so that left John & Chip to polish off the pound of fish(and I say that with all due respect to actual fish.) As a vegetarian I can only imagine the horror of salted, pickled, iced Herring FedEx’d from Minnesota (moreysmarkets.com), but the boys had no problemo. Now keep in mind that blood pressure gauges all across Northeastern PA were tipping off the scale as they ate, but I do give them credit for finding AND eating said fishy snacks.

The real CBG show today featured a return visit by Greg Koch (CEO of Stone Brewing) to “assist” the guys (and Ruthie) in tasting some Stone Beverages. Greg is a very funny young man and a wonderful advocate (make that representative) for the craft beer culture. Greg not only exudes humor, but has an obvious love for craft beer. It was funny to hear him intro with the words “Yo Scranton” and then explain that the 5:15AM time on the west coast explains why “Yo Scranton” was the best he was able to come up with.

The guys tasted Stone Cali-Belgique, Vertical Epic 9-9-09, and one of my new Stone-favorites, Sublimely Self-Righteous Ale. This is a beer I was lucky enough to try on hand-pump at the Port Brewing Real Ale festival in Carlsbad, CA. It was fantastic on hand-pump and great in bottles too. Greg also talked about how the Vertical series beers get more and more “Epic” as they age and that 2-2-02 is one of the rarest of the bundle. Greg explained that the series should have started in 1-1-01 but his “epiphany was a year late.”

The big news of the day is that Greg will be speaking with the British Consulate later this afternoon to submit an RFP to further the possibilities of Stone opening a brewery in the UK. Stay tuned here and on Stone’s website for further details as “Stone Skips Across the Pond.”

Thanks to Greg and everyone on the show today (welcome to Lee also) for a great start to the weekend. Cheers to you all and thank you to Greg for “visiting” NEPA to talk beer. Hopefully we get to hear from you again or share a Stone brew with you sometime in the future.

Been researching the name all morning. No luck. The blind thing has to do not just with the eyes shrinking but typically they are lost altogether in the drying process which allowed a string to be run through the socket and a series of herring could hang from a string in a bar.

On the Bar Foods product no longer available in bars, the "blind" reference had to do only with the robin on the card the individually wrapped herring was attached to. The robin was blindfolded. Why a robin? Why blindfolded, dunno.

Thanks John...Perhaps they were saying that only a blind bird would want to eat them? (this from the vegetarian of course). You'd think the smell would get you even if you were blind! I'll keep researching too.

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